F.A.Q.

All of our energy orginates from the Big Bang, which created stars and planets. Mankind has been fortunate that we’ve been gifted with special metals with the ability to fission (split). This phenomena (called nuclear power) produces the greatest amount of heat from the smallest amount of mass. Nuclear fusion (aka, the sun) drives other types of power that we have today.  We hope this graphic helps explain the origins of energy (click to enlarge).

(A single fission event produces ~200,000,000 electron volts of energy. Contrast that with the release of ~2 electron volts produced by the burning of a single hydrocarbon molecule. Burning hydrocarbons releases about 2.5 times its mass in CO2. Fission does not release CO2 and that is why it is widely seen as a key solution to climate change.)

There are dozens if not hundreds of governmental and authoritative groups that endeavor to help people learn the truth about nuclear energy. (Unfortunately, there are also many activist-oriented sites spreading inaccurate information which aim to make people fear nuclear.) Reliable sources include:

• • • The Department of Energy: Office of Nuclear Energy
    • The Idaho National Lab (and many other national labs)
    • The American Nuclear Society
    • The Nuclear Energy Institute:  Fundamentals
    • The International Energy Agency: Nuclear
    • The World Nuclear Association
    • The Nuclear Innovation Alliance
    • Nuclear Matters
    • Clean Air Task Force: Advanced Nuclear Energy
    • ClearPath: Nuclear
    • Third Way: Climate & Energy
    • The Breakthrough Institute: Energy
    • Good Energy Collective
    • Energy Impact Center
    • University of Michigan: Fastest Path to Zero
    • What is Nuclear?

Yes, many! Some of the benefits of nuclear energy are consistent between traditional nuclear and advanced nuclear and we expect that there will be numerous improvements provided by the advanced reactor designs being made available in the coming years.  These designs will disrupt energy in the following ways:

1. More styles, sizes and types of technology to pick from to help decarbonize a broader range of energy needs. Thus, advanced nuclear will enter new energy markets and compete for more applications that currently are served by fossil fuels.
2. Higher quality heat: Some advanced nuclear designs will produce very high-temperature steam that can be used directly for industrial proceses heat, providing a new way to decarbonize industrial processes that have long relied on coal or gas.
3. Use of waste as fuel: Some advanced designs will be able to generate energy from spent nuclear fuel—i.e. “nuclear waste”—and turn that into a valuable resource, solving two problems at once.
4. Factory production: Modular designs will be largely produced in factories and shipped as prefabricated components to sites, resulting in higher production quality, cost-reducing learning curves, standardized construction designs, faster build times and reduced financing burdens, all of which will bring down costs.
5. Scaled deployments: Factory production will enable the industry to build back its workforce, with training and continuous production cycles, and allow integrators to manage  construction at multiple sites, rather than needing expert construction crews for a single construction site. This approach will also yield greater and more enduring economic benefits and job creation.
6. Fill international energy needs: Rather than ceding the international market to Russia and China, the U.S.’s advanced reactors will improve our competitive ability to export a broader menu of technologies to developing nations and help build stable democracies that are not beholden to our adversaries.

While nuclear innovation has been on the rebound for more than a decade, until recently, news about advancements in the industry rarely received mainstream media coverage. For better or worse, our inability to stem climate change with wind and solar has forced so many more people and governments to consider nuclear as a solution, the once prevalent taboos against discussing nuclear are nearly gone.

We certainly can and should use wind and solar where they are cost-effective. Some places, however, don’t have good wind or abundant sunny weather.  Also, both energy sources are only partial solutions due to their intermittency. It turns out that it costs a lot to provide the back-up power and battery storage necessary to firm renewable power. Nuclear provides clean, reliable power that can complement wind and solar. Here is an animated answer to the question of “Do we need nuclear?”

Several leading advanced nuclear designs are now on track for demonstration units to be completed mid-decade and for quantity production to be available by the end of the decade. Many are already receiving sales commitments and exploring initial sitings. We expect multiple designs to come online in the coming years and considerable private equity activity will begin prior to end of the decade as the energy sector figures out its options. With bolder political leadership and increased pressure on the NRC, these timelines can be improved.

While it would be better if these designs were available now, we are nowhere near meeting the Paris goals of 50% reduction in emissions by 2030, which is a mere six years away. Thus, demand for these reactors will be growing as the dire consequences of climate change become clearer. We think the urgency to end fossil fuel use will be peaking right as advanced reactors begin rolling off production lines at the end of this decade.

Nuclear energy waste is currently a political issue but is not a technical issue. All nuclear waste from power production is safely stored, funded and has virtually no impact. There are a range of advanced options that can provide even lower-cost permanent storage (such as Deep Isolation’s deep geologic boreholes) and/or reprocessing and reuse of this waste as fuel. In stark contrast, fossil fuels’ waste—toxic chemicals, particulants and carbon emissions—have been shown to cause almost half of all air pollution deaths, an estimated 4 million premature deaths, plus are heating our climate. That’s the biggest waste issue humanity has. Nuclear provides a vital solution.

Of course, but that is the same for any new technology. No one has ever said that the high cost of the first prototyped iPhone means that there won’t be a market for the product. All technologies see declining costs as production numbers increase. Advanced nuclear, because of its smaller sizes and modular construction, will travel down the cost curve much more quickly than the prior generation of power plants, each of which were infrastructure projects. Advanced nuclear power using enriched fuel can become one of the least-cost energy sources available. Regardless, studies have shown that the existence of firm clean power on any grid with intermittent renewables will make the total cost of decarbonization cheaper on an all-in basis.

We have ~10,000 years of nuclear fuel available from known uranium resources, including a considerable amount dissolved in sea water. Experts have estimated that there is as much as 1,000 years of energy locked up in the unused fuel that remains in nuclear “waste.” Decommissioning all nuclear weapons can supply several hundred years worth of power, as demonstrated by the “Megatons to Megawatts” program implemented in the 90s. Then, there is thorium, another common mineral which is fertile, that can be used to augment uranium fuel supplies.

That remains unknown. Fusion researchers are making progress but slowly. This has raised expectations and funding levels. However claims of “net energy” (more energy out than in) from fusion are widely misconstrued and overstated. Fusion has never produced a usable amount of electrons for any grid, despite many decades of rigorous research efforts. Many don’t expect it to come online until the 2050s or 2060s. We cannot afford to bank on this technology being available to help us reduce emissions by 2050.

LENR is a third type of nuclear energy which has eluded precise scientific definition. Now, three decades along, scientists have a much greater understanding of the phenomena that involves metallic lattices and complex multi-body interactions by which a burst of energy is generated. Variously called Low Energy Nucear Reactions (LENR), Solid State Nuclear or Lattice Confinement Fusion (LCF), there are more than 100 initiatives and groups, including NASA and the DOE, engaged in this research.